The good news is that the city of Coquitlam will now have a third ice sheet for hockey, ringette, figure skating and public skates.
The bad news is the new rink comes at the expense of curlers, who will now have to travel to Port Moody to play their sport after decades of calling Coquitlam home.
City council voted Monday in favour of an arena services strategy that will see the curling ice at the Poirier Sport and Leisure Complex converted to general use in the fall of 2018. A staff report stated that the municipality would work with officials in Port Moody to amalgamate the cities’ two clubs.
“It is a lousy outcome,” said Dave Parsons, past-president of the Coquitlam Curling Club. “The people that are doing the voting… don’t know what is going on down here.”
He told The Tri-City News that the ice in Port Moody is poor quality and the club does not have enough room on its schedule to accommodate the Coquitlam members.
“It should be embarrassing for a city the size of Coquitlam not to have a curling rink,” he added.
The ice arena issues have been contentious since first presented to council earlier this year.
City staff have said that in order to maintain a basic level of service, an additional 1.1 ice sheets are required in the coming decade. Converting the curling ice, the report noted, is a stopgap measure until a new recreation facility, which is currently planned for the northeast part of the city, can be built in 2023.
Staff have also stated that curling receives a higher subsidy than other arena sports, an assertion that the Coquitlam Curling Club disputes.
Several council members acknowledged that a lack of ice sheets in the city has created the current dilemma but decisions needed to be made on how to best use the limited resources.
Mayor Richard Stewart said there are currently young hockey players playing games as late as 11 p.m. and practising as early as 5:30 a.m., an issue that would be remedied with the addition of another rink.
“When you have scarce resources, you have to be creative,” he said. “It is not about saving money, it is about making the best of what we have and to figure out where the gaps are.”
The arena debate also highlights the need for more ice sheets in the city, said Coun. Craig Hodge, who told council he wants to see staff speed up city efforts to build a new recreation facility in the northeast ahead of the current 2023 timeframe.
“We have not added a sheet of ice since 1972,” he said. “Yet our population has doubled since then.”
While it’s true the city hasn’t built any rinks, it has access to ice sheets under an agreement with the owners of the private Planet Ice in Coquitlam.
gmckenna@tricitynews.com
@gmckennaTC
